


All The Forgotten Things

by Jenwryn



Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-27
Updated: 2009-03-27
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:59:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many things which, over the years, Byakuya has forgotten.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All The Forgotten Things

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt 'alcohol' over at LJ's [bleach_contest](http://bleach-contest.livejournal.com). It won, amazingly! &gt;_&lt;
> 
> Unbeta'd.

_Petals falling from the engine.  
Can you see the number?  
Can you trace the name?_

~ Pinback, 'Subbing For Eden'.

*****

There's a bottle on the table, and two glasses. Finely cut, they gleam like elongated bubbles beneath the patchy glow of the moonlight, tumbling in at the window. Byakuya had forgotten how beautiful the effect could be; he had forgotten the way that the colours shine, and how the night seems so eternal and still. He had forgotten, too, the way that it makes your mind relax; not that he says so, of course. He simply turns the stem of his glass between two pale, slender fingers, and watches as the gleam dances across the table.

"It's beautiful," says the girl – the woman – seated opposite him, because apparently she has not yet fully understood his need for silence, after all these years. Or perhaps because she has more than understood it, but wishes to break him of the habit.

Either way, the sound of her voice, combined with those words, makes his glass tip, just a little bit. He looks up at her, slowly, steadily. The moonlight, he sees, has spread itself as wantonly across her hair as it has across the table, setting the black alight with almost-purple. If he were to close his eyes, he thinks, then her voice would become that of another woman, a woman from so long ago, now.

He keeps his eyes firmly open.

He watches, as she studies the dark cherry wine swaying in his glass. He watches, as she lifts her own glass, and considers the way in which it moves, as though she has never seen such a thing before. He had forgotten how inquisitive she could be, how curious about the unimportant, little things; she has been gone for quite some time, in the Real World. She is older now than he has ever known her, and yet she appears very young, right in this moment. It is rare for Byakuya to invite her to take supper with him, and perhaps that is why she had changed out of her black uniform and into a yukata; he isn't sure that he had expected her to do so. The yukata is coloured a shade somewhere between pink and mauve, and it makes her seem very soft; the servants had whispered about it, amongst themselves when she had arrived to dine.

The one thing, though, which Kuchiki Rukia does not resemble, despite the words he had heard upon their ill-disciplined tongues, is her older sister.

Byakuya has never comprehended the way in which others seem incapable of understanding that. Perhaps it is because they cannot see past the surface; cannot see past the superficial. Whereas Byakuya, contrastingly, can tell that even the simplest expression, belonging to the woman before him, is nothing at all similar to how the kindred expression would have been upon Hisana's face. Even if they cannot see that, he can.

The moonlight is a strange colour now, cast over Rukia. The clouds are getting in the way of his observations; they shift forwards and forwards, shading her from bright to dark to nebulous pearl-grey.

She had held herself surprisingly well at dinner. She had made him want to talk. He hadn't, but she had made him want to.

Now he looks at his glass, then looks back at her.

"It is indeed beautiful," he agrees. His voice sounds slightly strange even unto his own ears, as if he had forgotten how to use it for a sentence involving positive adjectives. He isn't particularly surprised, then, when she raises her gaze from her glass, and studies him intently.

"Nii-sama," she begins.

Byakuya shakes his head. "Enough," he says. "Enough."

She raises her eyebrows just a fraction.

The others are also incorrect, he thinks, when they suggest that he cares for the girl only because of whom she looks like; only because of whom her sister had been. They are furthermore incorrect when they suggest that he dislikes her for those same reasons. But they are not, it is true, incorrect when they state that Kuchiki Byakuya has never truly felt as though he were her brother; nor even her brother-in-law. For many, many years he had felt nothing at all on the matter, simply an emotional void, filled by the calm whiteness of necessary duty. And yet, now...

Now he suspects that he is starting to feel something very different indeed. He has not quite defined it, cannot quite find the correct name for it, although he knows that, when he _has _found it, he will probably consider it the most obvious thing in the world. A small part of him is already whispering that it is as clear to see as the moonlight upon her hair.

He shrugs the thought aside, although perhaps not far enough aside, because he opens his mouth and says, "Byakuya. That is my name."

He wonders what she had _thought _he had meant, when he had said 'enough', seeing as her eyes are widening in telling surprise.

"You should call me by my name," he explains. He sips delicately at his wine, and does not take his gaze off of her.

When she blushes, it makes her seem even younger and, for a deeply unpleasant moment, she actually _does _remind him, just a little, of Hisana. But then she leans back in her chair, as if she were the annoying Kurosaki whelp, tilts her head sideways, and says, somehow critically, like a woman trying out a word for the first time, and not entirely sure whether she likes it– "Byakuya-sama."

A small part of him wishes to correct her on that point, too, because he had just about forgotten what it feels like for someone to refer to him as if they cared, but then he decides against it, and sips, again, at his wine. He can be _sama, _for now.

Rukia nods to herself. And perhaps she does understand the silence, more so than he had believed, because she raises her glass wordlessly, as if she were toasting his health, and then drinks.

The night grows calm and soundless.

Byakuya approves.

Something in her eyes, though, as she leaves them fixed upon him, makes him wonder if he has miscalculated: she doesn't seem young at all, suddenly. In fact, looking at him the way she is, she seems almost older than he. _Woman wise_, he thinks; she is woman wise, and thus incalculably dangerous.

He hadn't really expected it.

He had forgotten, in the years flown past, just how clever women could be.

He had forgotten how much he liked it.

But she keeps her silence, and so does he. When their glasses are both empty and gleaming, albeit slightly duller now, in the middle of the table, they both stand up. The moon has passed away almost completely, beneath a bed of clouds, and the two of them nod slightly, exchange _good nights_, and move away in their separate directions.

When Byakuya wakes the next morning, he almost thinks that it might have been nothing more than a wine-laced dream.

But when Rukia passes him in the hallway, and greets him, his name on her lips sounds like a smile.

Kuchiki Byakuya begins to remember many things.


End file.
